Security

40 results arranged by date

When I heard the news last week that Bob Simon had died, I immediately thought back to an interview I had done with him in 2010. It was at an event called the "Courage Forum.," an ideas festival which took place the Museum of Modern Art hosted in New York City. It featured speakers who had demonstrated courage in various walks of life, among them tight rope artist Philippe Petit.

Tags:

The murders of freelancers James Foley and Steven Sotloff last year put the news industry on the spot. What could news executives, press freedom groups, and individual journalists do to improve safety? The issue was not new. International news organizations had been grappling with their responsibility towards freelancers and locally hired media workers for years. Several had begun treating freelancers as they would their own staffers when it came to safety. Freelancers too had joined together under the Frontline Freelance Register to demonstrate that they were professionals and should be treated and compensated as such.

Today, the Committee to Protect Journalists in collaboration with local media organizations launched a journalist security guide and protocol designed specifically for the Kenyan press. The initiative stems from research conducted in 2013 by the same group of organizations, the Kenya Media Working Group, in light of acute and unique security challenges for the Kenyan press coming to light that year.

Naqibullah, the Afghan police commander who killed The Associated Press' Anja Niedringhaus, has been given a death sentence after being convicted of murder and treason. He was also given a four- year sentence for shooting the AP's Kathy Gannon. Naqibullah (who goes by one name, as many Afghans do) opened fire at near-point-blank range on the AP photographer/reporter team in the southeastern city of Khost on April 4, 2014, as they were covering preparations for the first round of voting in Afghanistan's still-contested presidential elections. Wednesday's conviction and sentencing were the first steps along the legal path to a final conviction and sentence, which might not come for years.

Late in 2013, the United Nations General Assembly adopted
resolution 68/163 on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, in an
effort to stem the killings of journalists
and ensure that perpetrators of deadly violence against journalists are brought to justice. The
resolution was a recognition that it has never been a
more dangerous time to be a journalist, and that states have a
responsibility to take action.

Journalism is increasingly
mediated by the same digital tools to which we entrust the rest of our lives. In
keeping with CPJ's mission to enable and protect journalists wherever they find
themselves under threat, we are pleased to announce the hire of Tom Lowenthal, our first staff technologist.

Tags:

Sidebar: Freedom of the press is still a work in progress

By Fernando Rodrigues

The street protests in Brazil in June 2013 received extensive news coverage. However, for the first time in years, attacks against journalists and media organizations also became a frequent topic in the press.

Tags:

"Do not forget the genocide," said the voice of a state
broadcast announcer in Kigali crackling through a cheap car radio, referring to
the organized slaughter 20 years ago of more than 10 percent of the population.
"We are all one now," he said, speaking in Rwanda's common language of
Kinyarwanda, and meaning that Rwandans no longer identify themselves as being
either Hutu or Tutsi.

Should journalists expect support and
protection from security agents when they risk their lives to report on
security operations? What if their coverage could potentially expose military
strategies? Why are journalists disparaged as unpatriotic when they show how
security operations fail?